Software startups-A research agenda

Software startup companies develop innovative, software-intensive products within limited timeframes and with few resources, searching for sustainable and scalable business models. Softwarestartups are quite distinct from traditional mature software companies, but also from micro-,small-, and medium-sized enterprises, introducing new challenges relevant for software engineeringresearch. This paper’s research agenda focuses on software engineering in startups, identifying,in particular, 70+ research questions in the areas of supporting startup engineering activities,startup evolution models and patterns, ecosystems and innovation hubs, human aspects in softwarestartups, applying startup concepts in non-startup environments, and methodologies and theoriesfor startup research. We connect and motivate this research agenda with past studies in softwarestartup research, while pointing out possible future directions. While all authors of this researchagenda have their main background in Software Engineering or Computer Science, their interestin software startups broadens the perspective to the challenges, but also to the opportunities thatemerge from multi-disciplinary research. Our audience is therefore primarily software engineeringresearchers, even though we aim at stimulating collaborations and research that crosses disciplinaryboundaries. We believe that with this research agenda we cover a wide spectrum of the softwarestartup industry current needs.